Who doesn’t love Easter Eggs? They’re great as both a delicious chocolaty treat, and as a cheeky bonus or hidden extra thrown in by developers just to make you feel loved or special.
There have been too many fantastic Easter Eggs hidden across games over the years.
If I tried to mention the all time greats, chances are it’d end up being the same old stuff you’ve seen over and again. By now we all know about Yoshi in Mario 64, and the hidden rooms in the Arkham games.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to pick ten of the cheekiest secrets from the past couple of years. Maybe you know about some of ’em, maybe you don’t.
Get a Creme Egg or two inside you and enjoy.
Skip Far Cry 4’s Campaign
I feel obliged to tell you that this particular entry and subsequent video reveal massive spoilers for Far Cry 4. If you were planning on giving it a whirl one day, maybe skip this one and move on to the rest of the list.
Okay, so at the start of Far Cry 4 you’ve traveled to Kyrat to scatter your mum’s ashes at a specific place. Your journey to that point is kind of the main arc of the game. When the story begins you’re picked up (kind of kidnapped) by Pagan Minn, the crazy dictator round those parts.
During a cutscene Pagan will get up and leave the room to tend to something. He asks you to wait for him, but once control is handed to you, you make your escape to join the rebels and the game begins properly.
However, if you do stay in that first area for about fifteen minutes, Pagan comes back, thanks you for waiting and takes you to scatter your mum’s ashes.
Roll credits, you’ve just completed Far Cry 4 in less than 20 minutes.
Dying Light’s Spectacular Dancing Zombies
Zombies and dancing… I’m not sure which is more grotesque. Either way, the two were combined in this funky Easter Egg for Techland’s zombie free running adventure Dying Light.
All you need to do is accept a specific quest (check the video for details) and hit a switch to activate the music and get those corpses grooving.
It’s all fun and games until night falls and they decide to rip your legs off and beat you to death with them.
Tyrion Lannister In Witcher 3
Game of Thrones and Witcher 3 are both of the fantasy genre and feature a hefty amount of political intrigue, gore, and boobs. They’re basically the same thing, right?
As it happens, you can actually find Game of Throne’s Tyrion Lannister chilling in Witcher 3. I say chilling – he’s pretty much dead. You’ll need to sail to the lonely island of Kaer Almhult in the Skellige Isles, and after a bit of poking around you’ll find him a cell high up and overlooking the sea that calls back to a specific time on the show.
If you examine his body, Geralt will comment that it’s a shame Tyrion didn’t know how to fly. No shit, Geralt.
Wolfenstein New Order’s Retro Dream
At the beginning of Chapter 5 in Wolfenstein New Order, our hero is brought to a safe house for the resistance against the Nazis to rest up and… dream about fighting Nazis.
On the top floor of the house is a cot with a poster of the 1992 game, Wolfenstein 3D, hanging over it. The player can enter the “nightmare” and will be transported to the first level of Wolfenstein 3D, retro graphics and all.
This one does lose points for not including the original Wolfenstein’s mental boss fight against Adolf Hitler, but it’s still pretty sweet.
Dying Light – Mario level
Another Dying Light Easter Egg – there are a shit ton of ’em in this particular game.
Still this one’s much more entertaining than a couple of dancing zombies.
Head to a certain rooftop in the game, and you’ll find a familiar looking green pipe that actually transports you to a short Mario Bros style level. Incidentally, it’s a pretty good place to practice your parkour/hide out from the flesh eating monsters.
Now if only we could get that Super Mario/Resident Evil crossover I’ve been dreaming of.
Just Cause 3 – Weeping Angels
Turns out a couple of the team behind Just Cause 3 are fans of Doctor Who (quite right too). Eagle-eyed players can come across some familiar monsters from the series on their travels.
The Weeping Angels are a bunch of statues that can only move whenever you aren’t looking.
It’s a wonderfully creepy concept, and they’re waiting to give you nightmares here.
There’s a certain area in the game surrounded by crumbling stone statues. Turn away from one and then turn back around, and they’ll have moved towards you. Grim.
Incidentally, there’s a similar reference to the Weeping Angels in Witcher 3. Everybody loves Doctor Who.
Alien Isolation’s Origami Unicorns
Through all the abject terror and harrowing near death encounters with a bloodthirsty crazed alien killing machine, it’s nice to have something as soothing as origami unicorns to look at.
There are in fact two of the unicorns hidden in the game, and they serve as a nice reference to Blade Runner a great film which was directed by the man behind Alien – Ridley Scott.
I won’t go into the significance of the unicorns, but it’s a nice touch that fans of Scott’s work will certainly appreciate.
Joker’s Surprise In Arkham Knight
And now: a lovely treat that rewards die hard fans by making them shit their pants. Spoilers for the Arkham City follow, even though that game’s old as balls at this point.
So Joker’s dead and gone at the start of Arkham Knight, and the finale to this amazing trilogy of games actually begins with the clown prince of crime being cremated. Standard stuff for insane super-criminal disposal, I’m sure.
However, for anyone who completes the game first time around and returns for the more challenging New Game Plus… something bad happens. Just watch the video, okay?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0-QN8QbVOk
As someone who first discovered this with his headphones plugged in and sat right close up to the screen, I can confirm I had to go cry in the shower.
Fallout 4’s Hollowed Out Rock
There’s a rock hidden away in Fallout 4 just outside the Museum of Witchcraft that contains some pretty decent loot, and a cheeky reference to a certain town from Fallout 3.
See, in Fallout 3 just outside of Megaton, you can find a hollowed out rock that also houses some handy gear towards the start of the game, as well as a holodisk from someone called S, to a chap called E.
Similarly, the rock in Fallout 4 contains a note between the two same people which acknowledges that “history repeats itself”. Easter eggs never change.
P.T Reference In Metal Gear Solid V
The terrifying Silent Hills demo (P.T) may be gone, but it’s certainly not forgotten. It actually pops up in the form of an Easter egg in Hideo Kojima’s final game for Konami: Metal Gear Solid V.
Inside a tent at the Ngumba Industrial Zone, you can find a cassette player. Activate it to hear the exact same radio broadcast that plays in P.T, recounting a spate of grisly child murders. The feelgood Easter egg of the year?
Of course, the merest hint that P.T might have happened in some kind of wider videogame universe is enough to make me need to go cry in the shower.
Super Mario Maker’s Door Of Terror
This one is almost as chilling as chilling as anything found in P.T – but for very different reasons.In Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker, there’s a certain powerup that makes our Italian plumber hideously lanky. Juxtaposed with his normal portly self, the effect is rather unsettling.
Nintendo decided to capitalise on this vague unease by adding a little Easter egg into the game after an update.
If you were to add a door to your level, and if you were then to knock on that door, you would be greeted by a terrifying apparition.
Skinny Mario haunts my dreams to this day, and I cannot escape him. Happy Easter.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.